GEORGE ALLEN,
SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.
1872.
[1]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XIII.
My Friends,
1st January, 1872.
I would wish you a happy New Year, if I thought my wishes likely to be of the leastuse. Perhaps, indeed, if your cap of liberty were what you always take it for, a wishingcap, I might borrow it of you, for once; and be so much cheered by the chime of itsbells, as to wish you a happy New Year, whether you deserved one or not: which wouldbe the worst thing I could possibly bring to pass for you. But wishing cap, belledor silent, you can lend me none; and my wishes having proved, for the most part, vainfor myself, except in making me wretched till I got rid of them, I will not presentyou with anything which I have found to be of so little worth. But if you trust moreto any one else’s than mine, let me advise your requesting them to wish that you maydeserve a happy New Year, whether you get one or not.
To some extent, indeed, that way, you are sure to [2]get it: and it will much help you towards the seeing such way if you would make ita practice in your talk always to say you “deserve” things, instead of that you “havea right” to them. Say that you “deserve” a vote,—“deserve” so much a day, insteadof that you have “a right to” a vote, etc. The expression is both more accurate andmore general; for if it chanced, which heaven forbid,—but it might be,—that you deserveda whipping, you would never think of expressing that fact by saying you “had a rightto” a whipping; and if you deserve anything better than that, why conceal your deservingunder the neutral term, “rights”; as if you never meant to claim more than mightbe claimed also by entirely nugatory and worthless persons? Besides, such accurateuse of language will lead you sometimes into reflection on the fact, that what youdeserve, it is not only well for you to get, but certain that you ultimately will get; and neither less nor more.
Ever since Carlyle wrote that sentence about rights and mights, in his “French Revolution,”all blockheads of a benevolent class have been declaiming against him, as a worshipper